What should be the United States immigration policy?
This may seem an absurd question to do in a year when our current immigration agenda implies sending hundreds of people, including some than He came here legally and many wYet Without criminal record – To a saving maximum security prison known for human rights abuses, revoking the visas of candidates and doctoral researchers in the country above Speed tickets ORPÍN Missing customs formsand Kill our tourism industry With random imprisonment and harassment on the border.
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All the time, the vice president JD Vance publishes in X that we cannot allow ourselves to worry “Due process. “Yes, he put a fundamental constitutional right in fear quotes due to the need to deport the alleged 20 million people who come to the United States illegally under Joe Biden. Credible estimates to suggest that 20 million immigrants, legal or not, entered under their mandate. 4 million and 6 million People entered the United States that the Biden administration and 8 million in total revolved.
Given all that, it feels useless to try to describe what our immigration approach should. Any immigration policy that obeys the Constitution would be an improvement on the current situation.
Each of the things I mentioned above is wildly submarine In surveysBut voters They still tend to support Trump’s immigration management in general. That suggests that Democrats have a serious challenge: they need to communicate immigration policies to voters who are a clear rest of the Biden approach. Its expansion of Temporary protected state And the increase in asylum seekers I did not move the needle in favor of the party.
Now, the Trump administration has chosen to pursue a campaign without law, vindictive and that the Court challenges against each imigrant in the country, and it is essential that the Democratic Party develops a coherent alternative that can really win elections. While I can’t, of course, talk to the party, I wanted to take a chance in the next few weeks to articulate some of the policies I want to see in immigration. In this way, when the public resorts to the destruction campaign of this administration, there are some convincing alternatives in sacrifice.
What Biden was wrong in immigration
I am strongly in favor of immigration.
Immigrants strengthen the United States -The qualified migrants who work in technology and science and medicine, as well as immigrants who work in agriculture and construction, the essential roles of WHO in the US economy. Immigration is good for people who come here, but it is also good for people who are already here. It benefits the United States to be more populated: a larger country has more on the world stage, which benefits Americans in commercial agreements, access to consumer goods, international policy and much more. Immigrants to the United States They tend to assimilate effective” Immigrant crime rates are surprisingly lowAnd immigrant children have an academic performance, all of which enrich us as a country.
But immigration policy in a democracy requires careful balance.
The public is generally Support for immigration in some circumstances, but it opposes fiercely under others. Most legal immigration programs are individually popular, as well as some paths towards legal status for people who have legs illegally for a long time. But public opinion is recovered and interposed in immigration much more than in other contentious issues such as abortion. When the Biden term began, only 28 percent of Americans wanted immigration to decrease. In mid -2024, 55 percent did. And they cared a lot: immigration appeared routinely Near the top of the reasons that people voted republican And it is still the problem in which it is the best Trump survey.
Biden adopted policies that were much more People who come to the United States illegally or with temporary status Than any previous government. There were, or course, factors outside its control; The economy and conditions in Central America dramatically affected immigrant flows. But politics also mattered.
And the way in which the Biden administration responded to the increase of people on the border He quickly became Americans against immigration and against Biden and the Democrats. It even contributed to Trump’s return to power. Biden realized this and took energetic measures on the border in 2024, but late. Neinder its initial expansion of immigration or subferent repression involved a lot in the way of presenting the case to Americans for the policies they were chasing or explaining skeptical voters why they would benefit.
The approach of the Executive Order of the Executive Order of the Executive Administration of the Biden Administration proved to be a Terrible error. On the one hand, immigrants need a long -term stability and guarantee that they will be allowed to remain in the country, and any policy implemented by executive order can be reversed by executive order, throwing lives into chaos. “Do not secure the border is a gift for immigration restrictionists,” Derek Thompson in the Atlantic Warned last year. Immigration is crucial for our country, and voters are open to it, but they have to believe that it is doing well.
It is not Biden’s fault that I cannot obtain a process through Congress. Both parties have requested comprehensive immigration reform for decades, but are happy enough to kick the can on the road, and Trump opposed The bipartisan bill that last duration of Biden. Congress is not doing its job, but the president should not have tried to enrutate them yet.
Finally, there is the possibility that the absurd abuse of the present moment persuade Congress to stop postponing it and genuinely reinforce immigration. If that happens, how should we expect it to look?
My hopes of a policy after Trump
The first thing we need is a complete reimbursement of international students. It is very good that people from all over the world because they come to the United States to learn. It is a source of income for American universities, companies and communities; It is an opportunity for Americans to meet, learn, learn and share our culture with people of very different origins than ours. And many of them stay and continue very successfully in the United States and Innovate crucial technologiesAs my Creamleague Bryan Walsh explained earlier this month.
As part of the students’ hug, Congress must approve explicit protections of freedom of expression for visa holders, eliminating the power of the Secretary of State for Paw a student outside the country for writing an opinion article. (I think it is likely that these deportations are a little statosis foundation, but a new set of formal legal protections for students’ visa holes will be a good way to close in that chapter).
While we do, we must also strengthen existing laws and, when necessary, add new ones to protect against other Trump abuse: the Government should not have the right to send anyone to prison to the person that the person is a brightness ore ore ore ore or not, and the border patrol must need a Order to turn off and read our phones.
The second component of a better immigration policy is to expand and improve our workers’ pipe. There is a deep shelf or good proposals to improve The H-1B visa programwhich brings talented people who are crucial hiring for the United States. At this time, the program works with a lottery, so that all those that are eligible present an application for an H-1B and only some do not have a relationship between most of us need and with whom we obtain.
The lawyers for better immigration processes have been engaged Us to fix this For a long time. We must also make fashion expand the number of H-1B we sacrifice, which would be a victory for applicants, companies that, because hiring them, and taxpayers who benefit from the taxes that people pay and value create who move here.
It should also be easier for people’s spouses in H-1b visas to work in the US Specific green card process rules in the country That force immigrants from India and China to wait for much more to become permanent residents and citizens than immigrants from any other place.
And although qualified workers are the clearest victory, we should improve pipes for all workers. People not only make the United States richer and better when coming here if they are going to be software engineers. We also benefit from the hard work of immigrants in manual work. The dependence of illegal immigrants in our construction and agriculture industries is, frankly, something to be ashamed or. If we want someone’s work, we should provide a legal way for it. (Once again, none of these are new ideas or simply partisan ideas. They are just ideas that I think are highlighting the State while trying to sacrifice a positive vision about immigration).
Historically, the great treatment imagined in an immigration agreement is a marriage of these proposals to welcome more people to the United States (which Democrats support) with a step forward in border security and application (which Republicans support). In the future newsletter, I will argue that White or there is no bipartisan commitment on the table, we have to follow an immigration policy with one eye in both parts of that image, or we have Neith.
